5 Minutes with Brad Fenech

At just 24 years of age, Brad Fenech CMgr AFIML, senior consultant at Approach ICT, has already enjoyed a flourishing career in Canberra’s public and private sectors. He says the key to being a good manager is practising what you preach. we asked him to share six lessons from his career to date.

As told to Lisa Calautti

  1. Be yourself

“Build your own self. And what I mean by that is: it is all well and good to have role models but take bits and pieces from each as it is impossible to mirror one specific person. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses.”

2. Be uncomfortable

“Go outside your typical comfort zones. Take some risks. For me, that’s learning to be more creative. It forces you to learn more skills and talk to people. With that, you naturally find new ideas popping into your head at random times of the day or night.”

3. Take time out

“Something I have really committed to is meditation. And I can’t get enough of it. We are always on the phone, or a computer or some sort of technology, so there is so much going through my head. A good way to just unwind and collect my thoughts is through meditation.”

4. Be creative and innovative

“While I have found it challenging, these traits allow you to be one step ahead.  As a manager or a leader, if you aren’t practising these qualities, when it comes to your team you can’t expect your colleagues to do the same. It is basic psychology – practise what you preach.”

5. Be a good problem solver

“Two words come to mind – passion and confidence. Someone once said to me that life is all about finding problems that you enjoy solving. I guess the stereotype is that a problem is a negative thing but I am slowly coming around to the notion that they are not all negative. I try to find problems that I
enjoy solving.”

6. Be strong in your decisions

“This goes back to confidence for me. You make a decision and you might not be right, but you sure won’t be the last person to make a wrong decision. There will be naysayers but if you are comfortable with your decision and you have remained ethical and considered all the sources of information, then I don’t think there is anything more that you can do. As a manager or leader, it is important to be able to make a confident decision while remaining ethical. It is as simple as that – make a good example of yourself.”

3 Points of view: Hey, that’s not fair!

Fairness matters to staff and employees a lot more than  you might think. As a manager and leader, how do you ensure you are being fair and even-handed? journalist Nicola Field asked three experts .

Employees need to trust you if you are going to lead them. That means I not only have to be fair, but also need them to perceive me as being fair.

I make efforts always to have open lines of communication. Where possible, I explain the reasons behind my decisions. I involve my team in coming up with an action plan to solve specific problems. You need to be vulnerable sometimes with your team and share your own experiences.

I make a constant effort to treat everyone equally. The goal is always to align my actions with the shared purpose. The team should be able to see the link between the actions and the goals we share, even if it sometimes requires challenging old processes.

Leaders are not perfect. I try to be aware of, and take ownership of, my own biases and emotions. I admit when I have made a mistake and forgive others when they admit their mistakes.

Transparency is another crucial ingredient in both being fair and being perceived as being fair. My team knows how I make decisions. I am always upfront and truthful.

Ankit Sharma CMgr MIML – Project Manager, MMG Ltd

Transparency is critical to fairness. Especially with any reward, recognition and hiring processes. Ensure selection panels have diverse representation because while it is important to be fair, it’s also critical that it is seen to be fair.

If you have staff who are working harder than others, this needs to be recognised. If some employees aren’t contributing as much, seek to understand why. If you don’t manage a poor performer this can leave others disgruntled. Equity theory tells us that employees can be demotivated if they feel their effort is greater than what they receive in return, and they may seek ways to improve the level of fairness from their perspective. So leaders must take action. Listen to what’s going on in your team. If you are seeing first-hand or hearing from team members about there being unequal levels of effort, look at both sides of the story and work to find a resolution.

Michelle Gibbings CMgr FIML

Author of Career Leap: How to Reinvent and Liberate Your Career (Wiley)

Avoid the blame game. I have a personal philosophy of always looking at the problem, not the person. Fairness is about acknowledging that mistakes happen and encouraging employees to take responsibility.

For managers and leaders, fairness starts with transparent communication about expectations and consequences.

Be aware too of perception versus reality. Be sure you’re not spending time helping one particular employee more than others. Similarly, in any team there is almost inevitably one person who is super helpful, and another who just coasts along. It’s not fair to take advantage of those who work hard by overloading them – yet it can be an easy trap to fall into, until they’ve had enough and hand in their resignation. Instead, encourage the coasters to stand up and pull their weight – it’s not a case of picking on one person, or you as a manager trying to look good. What you are aiming for is the success of the team.

Coach the coasters to the point where they realise they need to pull their weight or reconsider whether they want to be part of the team at all.

Ken Murphy FIML

Founder, Ken Murphy Consulting

 

Is your workplace safe enough for teamwork?

In recent years, workplaces have shown a strong commitment towards workplace health and safety. Although physical risk at work is the lowest it has ever been, psychological safety has traditionally taken a backseat in terms of organisational priorities.

Psychological safety refers to the comfort of individuals to speak up about ideas, questions and mistakes without a fear of being punished or humiliated. For organisations that want to capitalize on the value of high performing teams, it is evident that they need to ramp up their commitment to building psychological safety.

This article will take a look at simple ways to promote a psychologically safe work environment for all employees.

Leadership

Unfortunately, leaders seem to be a major culprit for creating a less psychologically safe work environment. Why? As leaders, sometimes it can be hard to admit that you are wrong or that your opinion may not be as good as someone else’s. However, leaders who refuse to show any signs of vulnerability inevitably instill this expectation onto the rest of their workforce.

To prevent this misconception from constraining team performance, it is encouraged that leaders ask for feedback from their team, acknowledge their mistakes and show a genuine interest in calling on others for ideas.

Discussion space

There are numerous ways to promote a more psychologically safe space for team discussions. In particular, it is important to consider the types of materials encouraged and discouraged in the planning space.

For example, phones and technological devices can encourage member distraction, particularly in initial meetings. This can lead to less active listening by team members and can also make team members feel humiliated when they are sharing their ideas. As such, it is recommended that during initial discussions, technological devices are discouraged.

Another way of promoting psychological safety in team discussions is by holding discussions in a small meeting room. Small meeting rooms can create an impression of a more supportive team environment as it promotes more inclusive body language and reduces the risk of distraction.

Self-awareness training

Another method for reducing the risk of psychologically unsafe team work is self-awareness training. By encouraging team members to understand the perceptions of their personality in a team environment, they can understand the responses of other team members and adapt their behaviours accordingly.

One popular model for developing an understanding of an individual’s personality is the ‘Five Factor Model’. This model evaluates personality based on five key traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. By evaluating where each team member sits in this model, team members can tailor their communication style to support their colleagues.

How to facilitate effective innovation days

In the fierce contemporary business environment, we always hear people ramble on about the importance of innovation. So much so, more organisations are starting to implement workforce innovation days.

An innovation day involves the workforce splitting into small teams to try and solve a problem relevant to the business. For companies such as: Suncorp, Microsoft and Google, these innovation days have been pivotal for building high performance teams.

For those employees that participate in innovation days, it means much more than just working in a team to design a solution. Instead, they are working in a team to develop strategic ideas that the company could actually implement. This sets the scene for a highly motivated team as there is a strong sense of empowerment and purpose amongst members.

So, how can your organisation implement innovation days to maximise team performance? This article will take a look at the three key steps to facilitating an effective innovation day.

Step 1: Ideate

The ideate stage introduces teams to the issue and provides context around the issue so that ideas can be brainstormed. To promote effectiveness, here are a few sneaky hints!

Firstly, it is important to gain commitment by pitching why the business problem is a pressing issue and how it could potentially harm the future success of the organisation. By not answering the ‘why,’ employees are likely to care less about the issue. As such, passion and creativity may be lacking whilst designing a potential solution.

Secondly, to promote more active involvement by members at this stage, it is recommended that team formations are no larger than five.

Finally, there is a tendency for teams to rush this stage of problem solving and start going into detail about one specific idea before considering all available options. To reduce the risk of this, it is recommended that facilitators provide a time guide for teams.

Step 2: Prototype

This step involves teams taking their core ideas further. To promote highly effective prototypes at this stage, it is recommended that teams get the opportunity to discuss their ideas with coaches and mentors in the business. This will assist in highlighting any idea weaknesses and capitalising on any key strengths.

Step 3: Validate

The final step encourages teams to present their solution to their colleagues and other key stakeholders. This particular step is essential for two reasons. Firstly, it provides another opportunity for feedback so that elements of the idea can be strengthened. Secondly, even if the idea isn’t implemented, it provides teams with a sense of achievement for participating in the innovation day and producing a final product.

The building blocks of a high performing team

It sounds silly to treat teamwork like it’s Lego; however, effective teams can be built based on a few key building blocks. These building blocks are best described in Pac MacMillan’s (2001) ‘High Performance Team Model’. According to this model, the building blocks of a high performing team are: effective communication, common purpose, accepted leadership, effective processes and solid relationships. This article will take a look at why each of these blocks are significant to team success.

Effective communication

Effective communication is essential for team settings for multiple reasons. Firstly, it is required for healthy debate about topics so that more thorough options can be explored. Secondly, it assists in building the credibility of team members as everyone is able to better contribute towards the team project and understand the requirements of the tasks they are assigned. Finally, effective communication within a team assists prompt decision making so that projects can be completed quicker.

Common purpose

Having a common purpose in a team setting sets the scene for willful cooperation. In a study by Tarricone and Luca in 2002, it was found that having a team that was committed to common goals was essential in developing the accountability of team members as well as boosting their engagement in the project.

Accepted leadership

In organisational settings, sometimes teams are reluctant to assign a team project leader as team members like to feel equal. Sometimes personal motivations can be what comes in the way of this, such as a competitive work environment and desire to stand out to management. However, all personal motivations aside, accepted leadership is essential for team projects as it promotes project productivity, quick decisions, clear deadlines and healthy cooperation.

Effective processes

Effective processes lay out the method of cooperation in team settings. Different team projects may have different processes that are more effective; consequently, this is an important discussion for members to have at their first meeting. Processes may include the regularity of team meetings, how the team communicates with each other and shares information or how work is allocated and reviewed. By having clear processes suited to the specific project, there is less room for error and productivity is enhanced.

Solid relationships

As much as we would love for all team members to have solid relationships with one another, this is not always achievable in workplace settings. As such, organisations are increasingly focusing on the ability of individuals to work in teams when making recruitment decisions through the usage of psychometric testing and values-based interviewing. By building a workforce that is able to effectively manage relationships in team environments, communication is strengthened, misunderstandings are reduced, conflict is prevented and team agility is enhanced.

So there we have the five key building blocks to high performing teams. Can you identify which one of these blocks may be preventing your team from reaching its full potential?

Reference:

http://www.unice.fr/crookall-cours/teams/docs/team%20Successful%20teamwork.pdf

What do dysfunctional teams look like?

Unfortunately, many of us have experienced working in a dysfunctional team at least once. However, with the increasing use of teams, effective teamwork has become a critical ingredient for organisational success. But what make a team less functional than they could be?

According to Lencioni (2002) there are five factors that cause a team to be dysfunctional. These are: an absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results. Whilst these five factors may seem to be distinct issues, Lencioni argues that they are heavily interrelated. This article will take a look at how these factors interrelate with each other and how to overcome them.

Absence of trust

In team settings, trust refers to team member confidence, positive team intentions and the willingness to be vulnerable amongst members. When an absence of trust is evident in a team, there are numerous consequences. This can include:

  • Limited constructive feedback
  • Concealed mistakes and weaknesses
  • Negative relationships and grudges are commonly held

To overcome a lack of team trust, there are multiple approaches organisations can take. Firstly, it is encouraged that organisations implement 360-degree feedback tools. These tools can be a powerful method for building trust in teams as they promote transparent communication and ensure that team members are more comfortable being vulnerable around each other.

Secondly, trust can be promoted through workforce training on personality profiles. By helping employees to develop a stronger understanding of their colleagues’ personalities, they will be more emotionally intelligent. Consequently, the credibility of team members can be maximised.

Fear of conflict

The second factor of team dysfunction is a fear of conflict. Whilst an absence of conflict in team settings may sound seemingly ideological, conflict is necessary for producing healthy debate and critically evaluating ideas. Typically, teams that have an absence of trust are likely to also fear conflict as team members are less willing and confident to share different ideas or provide feedback.

To promote healthy conflict in team settings, it is recommended that organisations continue to develop the emotional intelligence of employees. By building the emotional intelligence of their workforce, conflict is less likely to get out of hand, meaning less team members will fear it.

Lack of commitment

Another factor that undermines the effective functioning of teams is a lack of commitment. A lack of commitment is a common consequence of a lack of trust and conflict in team settings as team members have less passionately expressed their ideas. By feeling uncomfortable to present ideas that they are passionate about, team members are likely to be less committed to the course of action.

On top of promoting healthy conflict and trust to build the commitment of team members, there are also other approaches. In particular, setting deadlines and encouraging team members to nominate which task they would be most interested in being responsible for are effective ways of building commitment.

Avoidance of accountability

When there is a lack of commitment towards a course of action, team members typically feel less accountable for the risk of failure. This leads to counterproductive behaviours that undermine the success of the team project.

To maximise the accountability of team members and promote team efficiency, it is recommended that teams take the time to develop goals and expectations before commencing the project.

Inattention to results

The final factor of team dysfunction is an inattention to results. This factor refers to the tendency of members to care about something other than the shared goals of the team. This dysfunction thrives in organisational environments where team members are assessed individually rather than being assessed on their overall group performance.

Evidently, any one of these five factors could be detrimental to the performance of a team. Can you pinpoint which one caused your dysfunctional team experience?

Reference: Lencioni, Patrick M. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team : A Leadership Fable, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/detail.action?docID=292516

The Lowdown: Project delays and bust budgets

How can you minimise the risk of a project’s timeline and budget blowing out as you work through to completion? By being aware of the inherent biases in our brains, and examining the landscape for insights into similar projects. By Vanessa Mickan.

Sydney’s light rail expansion is – surprise, surprise – massively over budget and behind schedule. I’m trying to imagine the planning meetings at the outset of the project, which will (eventually) add 12 kilometres of track to the city’s public transport network. I think we can safely assume the discussion did not go:

 “Let’s dig up some main roads to cause chaos and bring retailers to their knees.”

 “Then let’s surprise them by doing it for at least a year longer than we said we would.”

 “Don’t forget to make it cost more too. Like a billion dollars.”

 “Are you sure about that, only a million?”

 “No, no, I said billion, with a b.”

 “Genius idea. Taxpayers love that! All in favour say aye.”

Like most of us when we tackle a big project, everyone probably went into the light rail project believing they could get the job done on budget and on time.

So why is it that despite our best intentions and planning, big projects inevitably end up costing more and taking longer than we think they will? And as a business leader, what can you do about it?

Be aware of optimism bias. Four out of five of us have brains that are wired to present a rosier view of what will happen to us, according to cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot. For instance, about 40 per cent of people get divorced, yet newly married people rate their likelihood of splitting up at zero per cent. Step one in stopping the optimism bias from derailing your next big project is to simply start being cognisant of it.

Don’t fall for the planning fallacy. This common psychological quirk means we’re usually confident our project will go according to plan, even though we know other similar projects haven’t. Almost half of Olympic Games go over budget by more than 100 per cent, and many struggle to finish construction on time. Yet still Games organisers get taken by surprise. The Rio Games in 2016 are a memorable example, but the Montreal Games in 1972 hold the record: they were 720 per cent over budget and workers were sweeping up building debris as the opening ceremony began. The solution? Study data from similar past projects, and learn from them.

Streamline your communication. Tech innovator Justin Rosenstein designed the collaboration software Asana because of his frustration with wasting so much time at Google making sure the left hand knew what the right hand was doing – or what he calls “doing the work about work” – rather than developing products. But if it makes you feel any better about your own big projects, it took Rosenstein three years to launch his software … which just happens to be three times longer than he thought it would.

The state of digital transformation in Australia

By Mark Cameron FIML

Increased interest in “digital business transformation” within the global business community has been meteoric over the last couple of years. A quick search in Google Trends confirms that. Why is this so, and what does it mean for businesses in Australia?

Following the GFC in 2008 the term “digital transformation” was hardly discussed or understood. Ten years down the track it seems organisations, large or small, public or private, are focusing on their approach to digital transformation as part of their core strategy.

The conversations with our clients have shifted from “what is digital transformation and should we do it?” to “how do we transform?” and critically “how do we do it and not stuff it up?”.

What is digital business transformation?

“When a snake sheds its skin it changes; when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it transforms.” – SAP Business Transformation Journal

The key question to get right is this: Are you looking to increase performance or are you truly transforming?

Remember this analogy as we see a number of organisations getting caught in the trap of speeding up delivery and results as opposed to inventing for the future. Speed is important but without a meaningful destination, it can accelerate irrelevance.

Let’s tackle a common point of confusion. What does “digital” even mean anymore? It means many things to different people. It can mean the digitisation of marketing activity, or the implementation of new technologies. Both are technically correct, but significant opportunities exist outside these definitions.

In 1995, Clay Christensen and Joe Bower published their famous HBR article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave. “Disruption” has become shorthand for almost anything to do with change. This is wrong.

Disruption is about dramatic shifts in delivery models, experiences and expectations. Technology plays a critical role, but it is only an enabler. It allows for the rapid emergence of new models that upend industries and set new customer standards. The recent news of the collapse of Sears in the USA shows the true impact of disruption.

Rabbit in the headlights?

A study by The Global Centre for Digital Business Transformation found that 69 per cent of respondents see the need to adapt their business models to respond to the changing environment. Despite this awareness, only 55 per cent said that digital disruption was a board-level concern, and only 25 per cent had active plans to tackle the disruption head-on.

While digital transformation interest and activity has increased, there is still a gap in business leaders’ understanding of how rapidly the environment is changing. They see future change as linear and manageable.

It reminds me of a quote from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in 1998 in which he stated, “By 2005 or so, it will become clear that Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” Looking back now it is easy to scoff, but it shows that even the smartest people misunderstand the pace and scale of technological change and how it will impact the world.

Until executives create a true vision for transformation, the organisations they helm are vulnerable to disruption. A business with a better model, that offers better experiences, and new standards of service, will eat their lunch. When it happens, it can happen fast. Leaders run the risk of being caught out like a rabbit in the headlights, aware of the threat but unable to move, waiting for the impact.

Phases of digital transformation in Australia

Leaving disruption to one side, definitions of “digital” and “digital business transformation” help to progress our thinking. For the purpose of this article, let’s define “digital” as the convergence of multiple technology innovations enabled by connectivity. And we’ll define digital business transformation as organisational change using digital technologies and business models to improve performance.

These definitions will help to show that there have been three main phases in digital business transformation following the GFC.

Phase One: A reaction to the global economic crisis. A cost-out exercise where technology was employed to lower operational costs through introducing automation and reducing reliance on human capital.

Phase Two: The media landscape became increasingly digital and fragmented, and tried and trusted methods of acquiring customers and building brands became less effective. In an effort to connect with an increasingly “online” customer, marketing budgets increasingly orientated to technology, focused on data collection, marketing automation and technical capabilities.

Phase Three: Today, cross-sector consumer expectations are high and rising. Many products and services don’t enjoy the stability they once did. Through technology, businesses are searching for new sources of revenue.

Let’s apply this to Telstra.

Phase One: Immediately following the start of the GFC Telstra invested heavily in automation and cost cutting technologies.

Phase Two: When David Thodey took the CEO role in 2009 he focused the whole organisation on the customer, even using Net Promoter Score, as a key KPI.

Phase Three: More recently the current CEO, Andy Penn, is transforming Telstra from “a telco to a tech-co”, essentially moving revenue from their traditional space of connectivity of fixed line, mobile and data to new technology based products and services. This is obviously a monumental task for a company the size of Telstra, but a shift that needs to happen.

Telstra is far from the only company that has gone through, or is going through, these phases. This activity, in varying stages of maturity, is being carried out across the market.

Avoid sleepwalking into irrelevance

Taking action in the face of potential disruptive threats is demanding. While there is no silver bullet, and no substitute for great strategy and leadership, human-centred design methods complemented by the right technology choices are effective tools to fend off disruptive forces.

Here is a basic approach to drive digital business transformation:

Map your current state: Many businesses are unaware what their overarching customer experience is, or how the systems and capabilities work to support that experience. This is unsurprising. Businesses scale organically and focus on requirements incrementally. But this lack of clarity makes it very difficult to design a future state.

Mapping business capabilities and IT systems combined with mapping customer journeys provides clarity. The business then knows how the organisation works, where efficiencies may exist, and where customer experiences can improve to create a competitive advantage.

Design your future state: The best-performing companies don’t start designing a future-state focused on technology. They start with experience. Using service design techniques, led by experienced practitioners, start with the customer and design the target state that transforms your business.

This includes focusing on what it takes to deliver. Begin with your most important asset – your people. Understanding how employees will support your target future state, and supporting them in their experience makes the difference between good and great.

Map process improvements and revise your technology architecture to provide a supporting technology roadmap. This approach ensures your people, processes and technology are designed comprehensively and cohesively.

Communicate a clear roadmap: Leadership should take artefacts developed in the design process and use them to communicate clearly with the organisation. This will help create the context for change, which most of the organisation is aware of and agree with.

Next, be transparent about the projects, expectations and spend. This will allow people to understand how their job impacts the process and provide them with an opportunity to contribute positively.

And of course, communicate the successes. However, be careful of getting addicted to “quick wins” at the expense of the long-term strategy. Constant short-term activity is where organisations can execute a lot of change, but no real transformation.

Communication through major change programmes is critical. When you think you have communicated too much, you are probably pretty close to the right cadence.

Develop new ways of working

Developing and articulating a vision and strategy is one thing, delivering on them is another. All too often businesses allow the delivery of new products or services to become engineering led, which loses focus on the customer problem the initiative was set out to solve.

Human-centered design techniques can, and should, be employed all the way to delivery. Constantly testing and refining features and functions with the intended customer base ensures that internal assumptions about the customer are always being tested. Every idea is a hypothesis that should be validated or discarded.

This approach allows your organisation to begin to build a strategic design practice that puts the customer at the heart of any initiative. It reduces risk and cost of delivery.

Grab the opportunity

Organisations have learned, sometimes in very painful ways, that for digital transformations to be effective the human aspect needs to be at the very center. Yes, automation and machine learning will change the future of the job market, but it is humans, be they customers, staff or a wider set of stakeholders, that will always determine the ultimate success of these innovations and investments.

So, employ the skills and techniques necessary to design the future you want for your organisation. Design your organisation for what it will need to be tomorrow. Design for humans.

The Conversation: Awake to the call of leadership

Dr Daniel Jolley IMLa is no stranger to the fine art of decision making. As a consultant anaesthetist, he is called upon to demonstrate leadership and make life-saving decisions in an environment where split second timing can be critical.

Story by Nicola Field  //  Photography Peter Whyte

Dynamic decision making is the name of the game in an operating theatre. As Dr Daniel Jolley explains, “You try to be proactive rather than reactive.” Like all good skills, this comes with training. Anaesthesia requires a minimum five-year training period, often spent working alongside senior anaesthetists. Nonetheless, Dr Jolley observes that these days, the safety factor of surgery often hinges more on the decisions made by an anaesthetist rather than drugs, technology,
or equipment.

To learn more about how Dr Jolley rises to the leadership challenge – and why as a medico, he opted to undertake management and leadership training – IML CEO David Pich FIML met him in Hobart.

David Pich:   In leadership we tend to think somebody is in charge, and others follow instructions. But it doesn’t sound like that’s the case in an operating theatre.

Dr Jolley:   Australia is quite unique in that the position of the surgeon and the anaesthetist are on more of an equal footing. Coupled with the Australian willingness to challenge authority, members of the theatre team are less likely to be totally subservient to the perceived leader in the room. It’s interesting from a safety point of view – and this is something that’s been heavily studied inside the airline industry. There is a reasonably strong theory, for example, that Qantas continues to be the safest airline in the world both because of the exceptional training the airline invests in its pilots, but also because of the cultural tendency, in Australia, to challenge authority.

It’s the same in a theatre. It’s not uncommon for my aesthetic nurses to very carefully say, “Are you sure you want to do that?” So there’s a shared leadership role in the theatre environment.

DP:   Before you walk into the operating theatre, is there a briefing session?

DJ:   There’s been a big push over the past five years for a team meeting at the start. We have a brief discussion of every patient on the operating list so that the surgeon, anaesthetist and nursing staff can raise any concerns about potential problems and ensure everybody’s on the same page. You’re basically preparing for the unexpected, so that when the unexpected happens, it can be handled in a safe and effective way.

DP:   That’s interesting because a major focus for IML, at the moment, is the concept of intentional leadership. In order to end what we call ‘the chaos of accidental management’, you have to intend to lead. Are you saying intentional leadership is alive and well in our hospitals, and it cuts down the opportunity for accidents to happen?

DJ:   The surgeon is largely the default leader. But that leadership role can change very quickly in emergency situations, and when that happens, it occurs smoothly and without any real tension.

Where there’s say, a cardiac arrest, that’s an area that the anaesthetist is appropriately trained and expert in managing. The surgeon will look to the anaesthetist for direction on what to do next.

When I was a young trainee, I had a patient with a very nasty traumatic injury to the eye. The eye needed to be enucleated – that is, removed – because it had exploded from trauma. Pulling on the eye during the surgery can cause the heart rate to slow precipitously and even stop, which was what happened. It was the middle of the night, when not a lot of people were around, I did what I needed to do with the anaesthetic machine, gave appropriate drugs and then started CPR. We had a good outcome, and the gentlemen recovered well.

However, the feedback I received from my mentor – a very senior anaesthetist – was that I shouldn’t have been the one doing the CPR. I should have directed somebody else to do that. It was totally appropriate criticism because all medical staff are trained for CPR, and I needed to take a step back and direct them. Once I was on the chest I was very blinkered, and much more likely to be fixated on a smaller part of the problem rather than taking the big picture view.

DP:   At IML, we believe that reflection is often ignored in leadership. Leaders make huge decisions that impact lots of people, and then they typically don’t reflect on them. But that doesn’t seem to be standard practice in hospitals?

DJ:   It’s certainly something people are very cognisant of now. We’ve always had a focus on looking at why adverse events happen, and what we’ve done leading up to them. Then having a non-judgmental discussion about how it could be avoided in the future.

DP:   How do you stop yourself feeling vulnerable in those situations because, essentially, your performance is being judged?

DJ:   It’s a challenge. Anaesthetists have the potential to be self-critical. But there is a dominant culture among Australian anaesthetists of being a very social and supportive fraternity. So there’s always a lot of interaction and a supportive view.

DP:   You mentioned your mentor earlier. There’s an interesting statistic that only 21 per cent of CEOs of ASX 200 companies have a mentor. Whereas it seems in your occupation and your brand of leadership, mentoring plays a fundamental part.

DJ:   One of the challenges with the whole concept of mentorship is that sometimes we try to artificially force it on a situation. I suspect a true mentor is someone who finds you rather than you find him or her. That can be a challenge during medical training. You often spend only short periods in any one hospital or department, maybe six to 12 months at most, so it can be difficult to find a true mentor. However, most large departments encourage the development of mentor/mentee relationships to guide you through growth in non-clinical areas like leadership and decision making – things that are often forgotten in the midst of other professional growth.

DP:   One might expect that hospitals are full of accidental managers – people who, because of their technical skills, have ended up in management and leadership positions. What is the real situation in the medical profession?

DJ:   One of the challenges hospitals face is that there are lots of bureaucratic and organisational problems, which have largely been solved in the business world. There is a greater effort now to train, particularly medical staff, in both leadership and managerial roles so that they’re much less accidental and organic.

DP:   You decided to complete an MBA, and develop your skills in management and leadership. Why did you do that?

DJ:   When you reach mid-level seniority as a medical specialist, you often find yourself on various hospital committees, and making accidental managerial or leadership contributions in different areas. It’s very easy to be resistant to ‘management speak’. But I could see there was some real theory behind it, and I was doing myself, the hospital and my patients a disservice if I wasn’t open to learning more about that.

DP:   So, you went off to do an MBA at Deakin University, which is one of our accredited MBAs at IML. What did you learn?

DJ:   The Deakin MBA was very satisfying. It confirmed some of the things I suspected – that the organisational challenges, business challenges, finance and human resource challenges that impact day-to-day hospital life are far from unique. We have a responsibility to properly understand
these so that we can improve the way hospitals work.

DP:   What are some of the stand-out things  that you’ve taken from your MBA?

DJ:   Among the three things I’ve found most immediately relevant, Business Process Management taught me to look at the flow of information, staff, patients and associates, and how we create value. It blew my mind how complex all the processes are that our staff are undertaking on a daily basis. That means there are lots of areas for improvement and efficiency improvement.

The second area I thought was very interesting was Organisational Management and Human Resources. After completing the unit, you see that there is a huge amount of theory, both from the psychological point of view and behavioural theory, and I found that really useful.

The third area I found useful was Change Management. It’s all well and good to identify where there are problems, and then say, ‘Well, these are the solutions’, but implementing the solution is where everything falls down.

DP:   So would you recommend professional development in management and leadership for specialist medical staff?

DJ:   Definitely. The very nature of your specialist role means you have a position of leadership and you need to manage others. You might be lucky and do those well, but a lot of us don’t, and it’s our responsibility to learn to do them better.

In my line of work, where critical things are happening, you get the best performance out of your team when you’re calm and considerate in what you do. Internally, you may not be so calm, but projecting control and confidence is really important to have everyone else respond in a measured way in what could be a life-threatening event.

Leadership in 60 seconds

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat?

Twitter.

Phone, email or face-to-face?

Email.

Name a leader that you admire and why?

Michelle and Barack Obama together, as a team, because of the integrity
they have in the way they approach things. Obama was always referred
to as ‘no drama Obama’. That sort of quiet, confident, competence,
I really admire.

Your personal view on leadership?

One of the important roles of leadership is being able to communicate to the team the destination, what we’re trying to do, and the reason why we’re trying to get there.

Which three guests would you invite to dinner to discuss leadership?

Steve Jobs is number one. Not because I see him as a great leader, but I think he’d be a great dinner guest. Another person would be Julia Gillard to discuss her experience as Labor leader. I find the gender issues in leadership in Australia really fascinating. Mahatma Gandhi would be my third guest, to provide a different historical context on leadership and where it is now.

Advice for somebody just starting out in any career?

Don’t be too worried about getting the direction and the decisions right for where you’re going.  Focus a little more on decisions in a shorter horizon. You don’t know how your interests and skills are going to change.

What’s your personal resilience plan?

I really love running, trail running in particular, and also a bit of mountain biking – all of which are great here in Tassie.

Ann Messenger: From Student Member to Chair of IML

 

Ann Messenger has enjoyed a varied and eventful career in a variety of influential positions. In this interview she reflects upon the toughest challenges facing managers and leaders today, and shares some of the lessons she has learnt. 

By Jade Collins and Alanna Bastin-Byrne

 

Ann Messenger FIML is the Chair of the Board of the Institute of Managers and Leaders (IML). She is a chartered accountant and has enjoyed a varied global career, including six years working in Latin America as an equities analyst covering emerging markets.

Messenger worked in corporate finance and middle market advisory roles with professional services firms KPMG and HLB Mann Judd and later secured in-house roles such as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer with a variety of organisations including the Sydney Chamber of Commerce. Messenger has a strong interest in not-for-profits. During 2009 and 2010, she was the General Manager of St John’s College (within the University of Sydney) and in 2011 was appointed to Mosman Council’s Development Assessment Panel.

Messenger led the strategic rebrand of the Australian Institute of Management Group (AIM) to the Institute of Managers and Leaders to refocus the organisation’s purpose on setting and promoting the national standard of management and leadership competence. As part of this change, IML is the only assessing body outside of the UK offering the internationally recognised Chartered Manager (CMgr) qualification.

You are the first national Chair of the Institute of Managers and Leaders and originally joined as a student member of AIM in the 1980`s. Tell us about your long association with the organisation and how it has influenced and supported your leadership journey.

When I joined in the 1980s, management was a relatively new discipline and AIM was at the forefront of what was at that time the burgeoning field of management education and training. Since then, management education and training has become ubiquitous and IML has morphed into what it is today, the go-to professional body for managers and leaders.

IML has always had a sense of fraternity and as a young management professional there was a great sense of support in meeting others who were effectively in the same boat, not to mention a veritable gold mine of mentors who were always incredibly generous with their time and eager to help. Because IML has always been a completely independent non-aligned not-for-profit organisation, it occupies a unique position in being able to provide a nurturing forum for the profession.

What do you believe are the most pressing challenges leaders and managers face today?

The need for leaders and managers to constantly learn, adapt and change has never been greater. Nothing is static and with information at everybody’s fingertips there’s a constant expectation that we must keep up or be left behind. This is incredibly challenging and exciting but, of course, our reliance on non-curated and unverified data presents risks (and sometimes even fake news!). Seriously, though, this is where professional bodies like IML come into their own in providing sounding boards and support networks of like-minded people with whom we’re not in direct competition in a workplace.

IML has long advocated gender equality and diversity in leadership. What can organisations do to accelerate achieving leadership diversity and a culture of inclusion?

As leaders we can try to understand and appreciate that we are employing the “whole person”, not just the “professional part”. The good news is that by adopting a more holistic view of the individuals who make up our workforce – a culture of acceptance and inclusion follows. Leaders of organisations that do that are inherently promoting diversity and inclusion and, by the way, achieving much higher returns on their human resource investment.

Leaders can also dispel the myth that employees are somehow almost robotic, one dimensional units of production and accept that work is a means to an end for all but the saddest of the workaholics among us. In doing so, we bring some humanity, acceptance and inclusion into our workplaces.

As an experienced director, what would you recommend as the best preparation to those who are considering pursuing board roles?

There are a million and one sage and sobering accounts of boardroom activities, the most colourful of which unfortunately exist in court reports. Gaining an understanding of corporate governance is absolutely critical. Although experience within the boardroom via executive roles provides valuable insights, a director’s perspective is and must be entirely different. Governance is key.

What has been your greatest challenge?

There have been so many challenges. One that’s front of mind for me right now is accepting that sometimes things just have to play out and, as a leader, there are times when you just have to allow that to happen. The learnings and evolution that result for all concerned sometimes just have to come from the actual experience.

What are you most proud of?

In my role as Chair of IML, it’s got to be the rebrand and reinvention of the organisation. That is, of course, still happening. It’s been incredibly rewarding to watch the reaction to this fresh new brand.

What’s your one piece of advice for future female leaders?

I’m going to steal from Eleanor Roosevelt here. She once said something along the lines of: “Do what you know in your heart is the right thing to do because you’ll be criticised anyway!”

I guess that’s another way of saying believe in yourself and see it through – but I’d caveat that by saying, always…always listen to those who you know have your best interests at heart…and then do what you think is right!

As leaders we can try to understand and appreciate that we are employing the “whole person”, not just the “professional part”.